Is Remedy OnDemand Right for your Organization?

BMC Remedy OnDemand offers the same powerful functionality as Remedy on-premises, including access to the full ITSM suite, but it is a Software as a Service (Saas) product. This means it hosts data centrally in the cloud instead of on-site at an organization. It has the potential to help a company lower operating costs, since the organization does not have to spend time on maintenance and upgrades, as that is all covered by BMC. The trade-off is limited ability to customize Remedy. So how do you know if Remedy OnDemand is right for your organization or if having Remedy on-premises is a better match? The following items can help you get started.

Reduced maintenance responsibilities can save money: With Remedy OnDemand, BMC is responsible for addressing certain types of problems. For example, if the system is slow, or a customer cannot get to something, it is in BMC’s court and they will figure it out. Need more memory for an upgrade? No problem, that is BMC’s responsibility; and so is the upgrade. With Remedy on premise, these types of problems and updates can be complex with many items to consider such as firewalls, networks, memory, CPU, database size, the customer’s computer, etc. Having BMC responsible for this can reduce maintenance costs for the organization. Remedy OnDemand is delivered as subscription-based software as a service, with a per-user price that includes maintenance and upgrades. BMC also guarantees 99.5% uptime.

Limited customization may not give an organization all of the features they require: As a Remedy Developer, developing Remedy is my favorite part of my job. Even though companies often intend to use the software “Out of the Box” they normally need some customizations to the out of the box software for additional functions they would like to use with Remedy. Remedy OnDemand limits customization, and any customizations that are made need to go through a certification process with BMC. This limits the extent to which organizations can tailor the Remedy system to their specific needs. For example, a common customization that I often encounter is the “Last Modified By” field. By default, the “Last Modified By” field is updated with “Remedy Application Service” in Asset Management. However, customers want to know when the record was last updated by a person. I’m regularly creating a custom field and custom workflow to capture when a real live person modified the record. With Remedy OnDemand, a change like this would need to be approved by BMC. In addition, there are many people who also create their own applications in Remedy that are in addition to those offered with ITSM. This gives organizations an easy way to add custom functionalities by leveraging the existing ITSM framework. An example of this could be a survey application that project managers send to project participants to get feedback. However, adding applications like this is not possible in Remedy OnDemand.

Timely upgrades to new versions: Since customizations are limited and controlled by BMC, they can likely be maintained during upgrades. This enables organizations to upgrade in a more timely manner than compared to systems with multiple customizations. BMC is responsible for performing the upgrade, and will work with customers to determine timing.

Migrating to Remedy OnDemand could mean changing your processes to fit with OnDemand: Even if you are already using Remedy, moving to OnDemand could require analysis to remove customizations that may not work with the new system. If your system largely uses out of the box functionality, this could be easy. But if it includes a high level of customizations, this could be more intensive.

Overall, Remedy OnDemand has the potential for many benefits for an organization. However, as with any Software as a Service (SaaS) product, you have a lot less control over the application. If your organization can effectively use Remedy out of the box functionality, then Remedy OnDemand could be a great match and offer cost and time savings for your organization. On the other hand, if your Remedy system requires customizations to meet your needs, then Remedy on-premises will offer more flexibility for your organization.

About the Author: Lisa Kemes is a Remedy Developer at Dev Technology Group. She has been developing Remedy systems for over 8 years and is ITIL v3 certified.